This invention is directed to an activity toy for children of tender age which includes a helical member located within a housing. Surrounding the helical member so as to move on the helical member is a bushing, and surrounding the bushing so as to rotate on the bushing is a collar.
Because of the tendency of infants and young children to place objects within their mouths, toys constructed for this age group must take this into consideration. "Action" type toys which are interesting or fascinating because of the movement associated therewith, generally include one or more moveable parts. For the most part, most action toys are incompatible with the infant age group because of the necessity of having hinged or moveable parts which the infant or young child want to place within their mouth.
In order to solve this, several toys are known which utilize a hollow, spherical member as an outer protective shell which includes a moveable object inside. The object is moved upon rolling of the spherical member. The simplest of these types of toys locates a loose object within the spherical or other sealed member. These toys can be further sophisticated by further including an axle which traverses the diameter of the spherical member and has a figurine or other object rotatably mounted on the axle so as to rotate about the axle in response to rolling of the toy when the axle is in a horizontal position. A further sophistication of this type of toy utilizes a freely floating spindle located within a sphere having a figurine attached thereto which will roll or flip irrespective of direction of the rotation of the sphere because of the freely floating nature of the spindle.
The above referred to toys only exhibit action when they are actually being rolled. Once the toy stops or comes to rest, the action also ceases. In view of this, the toy essentially can only be played with as a rolling toy.